Here I come to shave the day

My dog has this whole oil spill thing licked.

As if planet Earth didn't have enough going against it, what with the volcanoes and the icecaps and the continued presence of Lady Gaga. Now it's got a massive oil spill in the Gulf Coast to deal with, where roughly 17 kajillion barrels of crude, or enough oil to keep the many hairdos of northern New Jersey well lubricated into the next century, have seeped out of a BP platform and threaten to ruin spring break as we know it.

It's a terrible environmental disaster, so of course Congress immediately set a timetable for convening a panel to discuss the possibilities of forming a committee to forecast the budget implications of possibly heading down there with a mop and bucket or something. The preliminary hearings started with blamestorming, as BP, Halliburton and Transocean Ltd., which sounds like a discount airline but is actually in the oil-spilling business, all met to convince Congress that each of the other guys were to blame. BP blamed Transocean because it was their platform, Transocean blamed Halliburton because it's trendy, and Halliburton blamed everyone else because they're not even sure how they got into the oil industry. "I thought we were a security company or something," said one confused Halliburton executive.

At the conclusion of the hearings, Sen. Billy, R-The Family Circus, laid the blame squarely at "Not Me," before leaving Congress on a dotted line that looped around the Washington Monument, hopped around on the Lincoln Memorial and dead ended in a seedier area of D.C.

It's a tragedy that in this era of increased corporate responsibility, these companies refuse to accept blame for this terrible mistake and move on to the serious business of shaving their dogs.

This is the point where you start scheduling my intervention, but hear me out: shaving your dog might just be the best way to help out the Gulf Coast.

I base this on an e-mail I received recently from Bluffton Today sales rep Peggy McLenegan, who never fails to pass on truly bizarre news. The press release, and it's important that you know this is a genuine press release sent by human beings, said:

"In conjunction with Lime Lite salon, Beaufort Dog and Beaufort Dog at Habersham are donating all hair clippings to the clean-up effort in the Gulf Coast. This time of year is the best to collect dog hair as a lot of our K-9 companions are getting their summer do's. Between both of our locations, we easily provide 20 hair cuts a week, many of which are buzz cuts or shave downs for the summer heat. This provides a great opportunity to help out with the oil spill. Please bring your pooch in to one of our locations and contribute to the cause."

My obvious reaction to this news was "Wait, what?"

But it turns out dog hair is a great way to clean up the Gulf Coast. As you can see from many of the young kids today, hair collects oil from your scalp and becomes greasy. But it can also collect oil from, say the Gulf Coast which is much like your scalp if your scalp was a massive body of water. The proposed solution, then, is to dump a whole boatload of hair on the oil spill, and then sweep it up with a giant broom and dustpan. This beats the current cleanup method of putting a giant box over it that immediately freezes and doesn't actually clean anything.

My home is currently inhabited by a dog named "Riley," a cat named "Phatima del puss puss la gata negro con pantalones y Chewbaccalips," and roughly 7 million cubic meters of their fur, which resides in wide, rolling hills under my couch and lets me know which of my house guests has allergies. I've long abandoned any hope of cleaning up this fur bonanza, as any time I put a dent in it, my pets activate their shed reflexes and the pile just grows larger. So I'd be happy to donate not only the fur but also my remarkable super-shedding pets to the cleanup efforts, as clearly we've discovered their "Dare to be Great" moment in this oil spill.

And I'll donate this mountain of fur to the cause just as soon as I clear it past Congress. By 2054, we should be ready to get started.

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As it turns out, hay and grass clippings are also good oil absorbers and easy to retrieve. Maybe a program to collect grass clippings would help. Lots of lawns around the country, although it is early to mow grass in the northern tier of states. I suspect oak leaves would also be good, but that is a little past its prime here. Probably not enough hay in stock and it would drive the price of hay up for farmers and cause cattle feed shortages.

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